


Fifteen Years

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 00:03:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16006070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: Time moves on, things change.





	Fifteen Years

**Author's Note:**

> Fifteen years ago I first posted as Mab, to the old 852 Prospect archive. Since I seem to have parked myself permanently in this fandom, my first internet community, I like to post stories on September 16 every now and again to mark the fact that I'm still here. And so are Jim and Blair. :-)

Candace trailed the departing group of community reps, obviously delaying her departure. She halted a way from the door, and Jim looked up from the papers he was straightening.

“I’ve got to admit,” Candace said, in her deceptively youthful voice, “that if someone had said to me when we rode together that you were going to be captain of IA one day I would have thought they were high.”

Jim lifted one eyebrow. “You roast my ass in that meeting and now you want to make nice?” 

To give Candace her due, she’d greeted him cordially before they began, but Candace had never let courtesies get in the way of goals. “I did not roast your ass.” A pause. “I roasted Spinelli’s ass, I’ll give you that.” Jim grinned. Candace’s tendency to bluntness hadn’t changed, and Spinelli deserved a roasting. “He’s not the captain that Banks was.”

“Not many people could be.” Simon moving on to greater things in the Seattle PD had changed Cascade, and not for the better so far as Jim was concerned.

Candace came closer. “You and me still butting heads in Cascade. I feel twenty years younger.” It nearly had been that long ago, Candace young and earnest, and Jim trying to shuck off the disillusionment of his return to the US and the fading memories of being Enqueri rather than Captain James Ellison. So much for that plan.

“Be fair, that business with the church bombings was only ten years ago.”

Candace winced and shook her head. “Twelve. It was twelve years. Trust me on this.”

“I guess you’d have good reason to remember. Head butting aside, things have gone okay for you?”

“Still fighting the good fight, still feeling like I’m pushing shit uphill, but hey. I’ve got a good man and the cutest little girl at home. Things could be worse. You?”

“Maybe similar to you. Fighting the good fight.” Candace had been familiar with the leaders of those Black churches for personal reasons as well as community outreach, and Jim was testing them both when he said, “No kids, but Blair counts as cute in a good light.”

“I heard about that. IA surprises me more. A lot more.” Close enough to a pass, Jim thought.

“You get older, you get a different perspective. I like things clean.”

“Your car, your house, your police department?” It had been a minor dispute when they first rode together – Jim’s attention to the cleanliness and order of their patrol car.

“Something like that.”

Candace’s eye fell on the paper weight on his desk.

“Is that a Jonny Waugh piece?”

Jim shrugged. “I think so? It was a gift.” A birthday gift from Blair just this year, but he didn’t feel like mentioning that. He liked Candace despite the way they always seemed to end up looking at each other across issues, but her apparent assumption that he and Blair had always been a done deal galled him. If only.

“My brother gave one of Waugh’s pieces to his wife for their fifteenth anniversary.” She raised her hands in apology. “Sorry, I don’t usually stare at people’s things like that, but it was the last anniversary they had before the cancer took him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And so am I. I’m holding you up.”

“Not a problem. I don’t mind chatting with old friends.”

She smiled at that, not fooled by Jim’s courtesy. “Keep arguing the right things about resourcing community involvement in the PD and we might even stay that way.”

Jim nodded, quite sincerely. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“See you around. Captain Ellison.”

She left, leaving Jim unsettled. It had been an awkward meeting, despite Candace’s overtures afterwards. He picked up the paper weight. It sat rounded and heavy in his palm, and he stroked his hand over the jaguar image etched into the surface. It was a beautiful piece – the clarity of the glass sat like a pool under the rougher translucence of the design. Think of it as a really big worry bead, Blair had joked. He’d known that Jim would end up doing exactly what he was doing now – soothing himself with the heavy smoothness of it in his hands. Maybe it was Jim’s version of sage smoke – letting the unrest and frustration of the meeting be filtered out through the crystal. He’d been around Sandburgs a while now, long enough to know the metaphors, speak the lingo. 

Candace wasn’t the only person who’d been surprised by Jim’s application to head Internal Affairs. He’d surprised himself, but yes, Jim Ellison liked things clean. Williams, Yuan and his crew, Aldo. He and Blair hadn’t made themselves popular by helping to root them out even when Jim was in MC; but if there was one thing that Jim could say about himself without self-deception it was that he’d never sought popularity. He’d walked away in disgust at the corruption he’d seen in Oliver. He could have done the same with the PD, especially once Simon had left but here he was, in his immaculate, somewhat stark office. A couple of pictures and plants, and this gift of Blair’s.

Candace talking about her brother sparked a long ago memory – Caroline and Jim, back when things were good, joking about the traditional gifts set out for wedding anniversaries and making ever more ridiculous suggestions for their future celebrations. He opened up his browser. A few clicks confirmed a nearly forgotten association. “You and your symbolism, Sandburg,” he said softly, and took out the soft cloth he kept in the back of one desk drawer and buffed the glass to as close to a flawless shine as he could and gently put it down where it would catch the light. The jaguar stared dispassionately at the ceiling as he picked up the phone and called an internal number.

“Hellooo, Sandburg here.”

“Hey, Chief. Feel like a late lunch?”

“If we make it quick. I should be getting some results back for the Alden case soon.”

“Quick it is. I’ll meet you on your floor.”

The elevator door opened to Blair’s face. He hopped inside and grinned at Jim. “Do I have timing or do I have timing?”

“You occasionally have timing,” Jim said. The door shut against Forensics and its light and smell. “I was thinking that new deli on north 24th?”

“Yeah, we could do that.” Blair leaned a tad closer to offer Jim a quick, one-armed hug - only a quick one, in deference to Jim’s dignity as a captain. That was the declaration in his impish grin. One of these days Jim was going to kiss that tease right off Blair’s face, his own rules about displays of affection in the department be damned. But not today. “How did the big meeting go?” Blair asked, alert for work gossip and about to be disappointed.

“It went.”

“And how’s Candace? I didn’t realise she was back in Cascade.”

“Neither did I until we were arranging everything. She’s herself. Tough. Taking no prisoners. Not surprised by you and me getting together.”

“Oh sure,” Blair scoffed. “It’s not like anyone is ever surprised after the event.”

“Everyone sure wasn’t about us,” Jim said a tad grimly. Blair frowned, and Jim shook his head. “Don’t let it bother you. Candace reminded me how long ago it was that she and I rode together, and now I’m feeling my age.”

They exited into the lobby. “Ah, Blair said, “but you still look pretty good for your age.” His face twisted into comic lewdness. “Feel pretty good too,” he said softly enough that only Jim would hear

“Professional decorum, Sandburg,” Jim said, just to jerk Blair’s chain. “It’s a thing.”

Blair’s cheerful face didn’t suggest that he felt hauled back in any way. “Oh my god,” he declared instead at the light outside. “There’s this strange yellow thing up in the sky.” He lifted his face to the sun. Light reflected from the silver hair threaded among the brown. “I might even break a sweat if I go for a run under that.”

The new deli was okay, but probably not going to be the next big thing. That was okay, because it meant that Blair and Jim could get a table by a window and bathe in the sun, welcome after nearly a solid week of grey skies.

Blair ate with gusto even though Jim didn’t think that the food was anything special. All that running, no doubt. He was planning on a half marathon this year, and had developed a wiry, runner’s build in evidence of intent. A runner’s face too, sharp cut and tanned and with ever deepening crows feet at his eyes.

“Candace reminded me of something else besides the fact I’m getting old.”

“Middle-aged,” Blair mumbled through his food.

“Did you know that if you’re giving wedding anniversary gifts that you give crystal to mark fifteen years together?”

Blair looked at the deli’s ceiling rather than meet Jim’s eyes. Finally, he shifted in his chair, actually looked at Jim and said, “I might know that.”

“Oh, you might?”

“Well, hey, I had to give you something for your birthday, and you liked it,” Blair said, belligerent over the remains of his chicken pasta salad. “And if I was giving anniversary gifts I would have given you whatever’s traditional for ten years anyway, so I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“No big deal. Like I said, I guess I’m feeling my age today. You and I have known each other fifteen years.”

“Yeah.”

“Things change,” Jim said, unsure where he was going with this but feeling led on somehow. Not to anywhere he didn’t want to go.

“Well duh, Jim.”

Jim’s destination appeared before him. “Do you ever wish we’d gone down to California, before the assholes passed that shitty proposition?”

Blair’s eyes softened. “I don’t know. Maybe, but you and I have both lived in Cascade a long time now. If we could do it in our own state, our own place, it’d feel different somehow.”

“Who’s got a territorial imperative now, Sandburg?” They could joke about that. Things did indeed change.

“And don’t you forget it,” Blair growled.

“Well, if the legislature gets its act together, we could think about it.” Jim smiled at Blair. “I might even propose the old fashioned way.”

Blair shook his head. “Maybe you would. But no diamonds unless they’re heirloom, man. Too much suffering attached to that trade these days.”

“My grandmother had a ring set. I’ll see what I can do if the chance comes.” Blair made a discreet but definitely rude gesture. “And we’d need anniversary presents as well as birthday presents. It would open up whole new opportunities.”

They stood to leave. “First, it has to be legal. And if I was buying anniversary presents, well, I wouldn’t expect anything too fancy, Jim. A forensics tech doesn’t earn as much as a Captain.” Blair played the poor under-funded innocent card with considerable panache - soulful, wide-eyed. It didn’t fool Jim any more than it had fifteen years ago. That didn’t mean he was proof against it.

“A guy with your levels of resource and imagination would come up with something. It’d add a little excitement to our relationship. Anticipation.”

“You are treading on dangerous ground, Ellison. You think we’d get married and that would be that? Nothing to look forward to except material gain? And what about my anniversary gifts, huh? I think I’d deserve a little imagination and resource too.”

“I’d rise to the occasion, I suppose,” Jim said as they stepped out onto the sidewalk, and Blair rolled his eyes. Jim slung an arm over Blair’s shoulder. “You have eclectic tastes; I could afford to go a little way out sometimes.”

“Eclectic,” Blair sputtered, but it was all for effect. 

They had the walk back to the PD, but that was okay. The sun was still shining. It had shone the day they met.

Fifteen years, my god, Jim thought, and smiled.


End file.
